Russia: Putin ‘threatening civilian ships in Black Sea’ as Ukraine advances – latest

A senior Ukrainian official accused Russia on Friday of threatening civilian vessels in the Black Sea, and urged the international community to condemn what he said were “the methods of terrorists”.

Russia last week quit a U.N.-brokered deal allowing Ukraine, a major global grain producer, to safely export its grain via the Black Sea and warned that ships heading to Ukrainian seaports could be considered military targets.

“Russian warships are threatening civilians in the Black Sea, violating all norms of international maritime law,” Andriy Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

In a separate statement, Ukraine‘s border guard service said it had intercepted a warning communicated by Russia to a civilian vessel passing near a Ukrainian port on Thursday.

It did not identify the name of the ship or the port, but said: “The aggressor’s warships continue to behave brazenly and audaciously in the waters of the Black Sea, violating all the norms of international maritime law”.

The statement quoted the Russian party as saying: “I am warning you about the ban on movement to the ports of Ukraine.”

“Also, the transport of any cargo to Ukraine is considered by the Russian side to be the potential transportation of military cargo,” it was quoted as saying.

The country of the vessel’s flag would be considered a party to the conflict in Ukraine, it said.

Russia did not immediately respond to Yermak’s comments or to the border guard service’s statement.

Russian forces on Friday pounded a key village in southeastern Ukraine that Kyiv claimed to have recaptured in its grinding counteroffensive.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, marked Ukraine’s Statehood Day by reaffirming the country’s sovereignty — a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used his claim that Ukraine didn’t exist as a nation to justify his invasion.

“Now, like more than a thousand years ago, our civilizational choice is unity with the world,” Zelenskyy said in a speech outside St. Michael’s Monastery in Kyiv. “To be a power in world history. To have the right to its national history – of its people, its land, its state. And of our children – all future generations of the Ukrainian people. We will definitely win!”

He also honored servicemen and handed out first passports to young citizens as part of ceremonies in the square. The holiday coincides with the observance that marks the beginning of the widespread adoption of Christianity in land that later became Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

On the battlefield, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, colonel general Oleksandr Syrskyi, said his troops were pushing forward in parts of eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia and meeting stiff resistance as the war drags into its 18th month.

“The enemy fiercely clings to every centimeter, conducting intense artillery and mortar fire,” he said in a statement.

A blast shook the central square of the city of Taganrog in southwest Russia, close to the border with Ukraine, on Friday, the RIA news agency reported.

At least six people were injured by the explosion which damaged a residential building, according to another agency, TASS. Videos from the scene circulated online showed a low-rise building partly reduced to rubble.

The cause of the blast was not immediately known.

African leaders pressed Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday to move ahead with their peace plan to end the Ukraine war and to renew a deal on the export of Ukrainian grain that Moscow tore up last week.

While not directly critical of Russia, their interventions on the second day of a summit with Putin were more concerted and forceful than those that African countries have voiced until now.

They served as reminders to the Kremlin leader of the depth of African concern at the consequences of the war, especially rising food prices.

“This war must end. And it can only end on the basis of justice and reason,” African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told Putin and African leaders in St Petersburg.

“The disruptions of energy and grain supplies must end immediately. The grain deal must be extended for the benefit of all the peoples of the world, Africans in particular.”

Reuters reported in June that the African plan floats a series of possible steps to defuse the conflict including a Russian troop pull-back, removal of Russian tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspension of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Putin, and sanctions relief.

Putin gave it a polite but cool reception when African leaders presented it to him last month. On Friday he said Moscow respected the proposal and was carefully studying it.

Congo Republic President Denis Sassou Nguesso said the African initiative “deserves the closest attention, it mustn’t be underestimated…We once again urgently call for the restoration of peace in Europe.”

Senegal’s President Macky Sall called for “a de-escalation to help create calm”, while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he hoped that “constructive engagement and negotiation” could bring an end to the conflict.

The stream of calls prompted Putin repeatedly to defend Russia‘s position and place the blame on Ukraine and the West.

The privacy watchdog has said it will make inquiries amid reports that typing errors at the Ministry of Defence led to emails containing information relating to personnel being sent to a Russian ally.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it is aware of the incident and will be “making inquiries”.

The PA news agency understands the ICO has not launched an investigation at this stage.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it is investigating, but insisted it would be misleading to suggest state secrets were sent to Mali’s email domain.

In a statement on Twitter, the MoD said: “We assess fewer than 20 routine emails were sent to an incorrect domain and are confident there was no breach of operational security or disclosure of technical data.

“An investigation is ongoing. Emails of this kind are not classified at secret or above.”

An ICO spokesperson said: “We are aware of this incident and will be making inquiries.”

Qatar will provide Ukraine with $100 million in humanitarian aid to support health, education and demining, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday after talks with the Gulf state’s prime minister.

Qatar had earlier on Friday announced that Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who also serves as foreign minister, was visiting Ukraine.

“This money will be channelled for reconstruction in the health and education sectors, humanitarian de-mining, and other important social and humanitarian projects,” Shmyhal told a joint briefing.

Shmyhal said they had discussed Ukraine’s peace formula – a 10-point peace plan that calls for nuclear, energy, and food security, restoration of borders, and other points.

He thanked Qatar for its readiness to mediate in efforts to repatriate thousands of Ukrainian children taken to Russia since Moscow’s invasion.

Moscow says it wants to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone. Ukraine says many children have been illegally deported and the United States says thousands of children have been forcibly removed from their homes.

The Qatari prime minister said he was due to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky later on Friday.

Ukraine has reported regaining further ground from invading Russian forces along the eastern and southern fronts in early July as its counteroffensive continues, following on from the liberation of a number of frontline villages in June.

Offering an update from the frontlines on Monday 10 July, the Ukrainian military said its troops have so far retaken more than 65 square miles on the southern front and 9.26 square miles around the eastern city of Bakhmut since the counteroffensive effort commenced.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said that heavy fighting raged in two areas of the southeast.

“We are consolidating our gains in those areas,” she wrote.

Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who remains active despite leading a failed mutiny against the Russian army’s top brass last month, has hailed Niger’s military coup as good news and offered his fighters’ services to bring order.

A voice message on Telegram app channels associated with Wagner which they said was Prigozhin did not claim involvement in the coup, but described it as a moment of long overdue liberation from Western colonisers and made what looked like a pitch for his fighters to help keep order.

“What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonisers. With colonisers who are trying to foist their rules of life on them and their conditions and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago,” said the message, posted on Thursday evening.

The speaker had the same distinctive intonation and turn of phrase in Russian as the Wagner boss although Reuters was not able to confirm with certainty that it was him.

“Today this is effectively gaining their independence. The rest will without doubt depend on the citizens of Niger and how effective governance will be, but the main thing is this: they have got rid of the colonisers,” the message said.

The Chinese government defended its dealings with Russia as “normal economic and trade cooperation” Friday after a United States intelligence report said Beijing possibly provided equipment used in Ukraine that might have military applications.

The Biden administration has warned Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government of unspecified consequences if it supports the Kremlin’s war effort.

The latest report cited Russian customs data that showed Chinese state-owned military contractors supplied navigation equipment, fighter jet parts, drones and other goods, but didn’t say whether that might trigger U.S. retaliation.

“China has been carrying out normal economic and trade cooperation with countries around the world, including Russia,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She said Chinese-Russian cooperation “neither targets a third party nor is it subject to interference and coercion by a third party.”

Mr Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared before the February 2022 invasion that their governments had a “no-limits” friendship. Beijing says it is neutral in the war, but it has blocked efforts to censure Moscow in the United Nations and has repeated Russian justifications for the attack.